Guest Post by Jim Kunstler
I played fiddle at a small-town, country dance last night with several other musicians and it was a merry enough time because that kind of self-made music has the power to fortify spirits. About half the dancers were over 40 and the rest were teenage girls. The absence of young men was conspicuous. Toward the end of the evening, it was just girls dancing with girls. A wonderful and fundamental tension was not present in the room.
The young men are out there somewhere in the country towns, but this society increasingly has no use or no place for them, except in the army. There is absolutely no public conversation about the near total devaluation of young men in the economic and social life of the USA, though there is near-hysterical triumphalism about the success of young women in every realm from sports to politics to business, and to go with that an equal amount of valorization for people who develop an ambiguous sexual identity.
There really is no local forum for public discussion in the flyover regions of the USA. The few remaining local newspapers are parodies of what newspapers once were, and the schools maintain a fog of sanctimony that penalizes thinking outside the bright-side box. Television and its step-child, the internet, offer only the worst temptations of hyper-sexual stimulation, artificial violence, and grandiose wealth-and-power fantasies. There aren’t even any taverns where people can gather for casual talk.
Many of the remaining jobs “out there” are jobs that can be done by anyone — certainly the office work, but also the jobs with near-zero meaning, minimal income, and no status in the national chain burger shacks and box stores — and young women are more reliably subject to control than young men jacked on testosterone, corn syrup, and Grand Theft Auto.
Of course, the idea that higher education can lift a population out of this vortex of anomie is a cruel joke, especially now with the college loan racket parasitizing that flickering wish to succeed, turning young people into debt donkeys. The shelf-life of that particular set of lies and swindles will hit its sell-by date soon in a massive debt repudiation — and the nation will come to marvel at the mendacious system it allowed itself to get sucked into. But this still only begs the question of what young men will do in such a deceitful system.
My guess is that they will shift their attention and activity from the mind-slavery of the current Potemkin economy to the very monster we find ourselves fighting overseas: a domestic ISIS-style explosion of wrath wrapped in an extreme ideology of one kind or another replete with savagery and vengeance-seeking. The most dangerous thing that any society can do is invalidate young men. When the explosion of youthful male wrath occurs in the USA, it will come along at exactly the same time as all the other benchmarks of order become unmoored — especially the ones in money and politics — which will shatter the faith of the non-young and the non-male, too. Also, just imagine for a moment the numbers of young men America has trained with military skills the past 20 years. Not all of them will be disabled with PTSD, or mollified with rinky-dink jobs at the Wal-Mart, or lost in the transports of heroin and methedrine.
The authorities will have no way to understand what is happening and we are certain to endure a long season of violence and social chaos as a result. The re-set from that will be an economy and a society that few now yammering in the HuffPo or the Tea Party will recognize. That society emerging from the ashes of the current matrix of rackets will desperately need young men to rebuild, and there will be plenty of opportunity for them — though it won’t feature fast cars, Kanye West downloads, or bottle service.
There are other ways for young men to find a useful and valued place in a society, but these are too far beyond the ken of our current meager narratives.
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Wow. So, young American men will foment a “domestic ISIS-style explosion of wrath”?
That’s a helluva prediction. I’m sure Kunstler’s track record on predicting stuff is usually spot on.
I agree Stuck, but I also see some potential for reality in this prediction. Hordes of young men without a path to ordinary success – stable, decent-paying job and a wife – are not stable. Historically they are usually sent to foreign wars, or to settle “new” lands whenever those are available, which isn’t often. Failing those outlets, they tend to turn their discontent towards the local establishment.
the most dangerous animal on earth is an unemployed 19 year old male…bet on it.
Yes but the best of all those returning war vets are being employed in those burgeoning militarialized police forces to further repress our lives
Ah, Mr. Kunstler, I think your circumstances may be blinding you to the reality.
There were no boys at your “country” dance, where you play your “fiddle,” not because of some new thing (other than a distinct change in parenting styles), but, because, if any generation’s boys were given the choice to not go hang out with a bunch of old people playing old people’s music, they would take it. The boys bitched, and were set free, I don’t know a lot of parents that are actually the parents anymore. The girls have to go because no “good” parent will leave a girl alone anymore, and her friends will be there.
Your own belief in your own value and talent colors your opinion of the “reason” the boys are not there. So sorry to blow your whole justification for the demonization of our boys.
As for the ISIS thing. I know quite a few young males, and I doubt it.
The ISIS guys will be the X’ers or older, as they are the ones that still have the belief that women should be home, without rights, pregnant, or taking care of the kids, and the government should still be in our bedrooms, and living rooms, and cars, and doling out regulations and rules and “fairness” allowances for personal contracts. The Millennials have no such belief systems, they truly are our first generation to think in the PC terms we have pushed for the past five – or ten – decades.
Now will one of the little bastards freak out and shoot their entire family – or neighborhood – when the internet/phones go down for a week, or there is not Coke and Cheetos available 24/7, then yep, probably. I’d take the odds on that happening.
But will they form together and rise up and be effective in the same way the ISIS guys are?
Not on your life. These kids have been raised to be followers that think they are leaders. All the hubris of the intelligent and successful with none of the skills or IQs.
Now maybe if some late Boomer or X’er shows up with the plans and the rhetoric and the fire power, he could get enough scared and hungry dis-connected youts to do what he says. Funny, I’m more scared of the chief than the brave. How disconnected does one have to be?
Amuses the hell out of me that the generation that destroyed the world for the Millies is now out propagating fear and distrust for them too.
Damned before they were born and now vilified and criminalized and marginalized. All before most can legally order a beer.
And all to continue the farce.
Poor little bastards.
Which kinda makes me wish they would rise up. I still really can’t see it happening though.
But what do I know? I surely don’t fiddle at a hoedown and hang with all the average locals. I’m sure those attending, and playing, are the epitome of the ‘murkin Common Man.
Sure they were.
We’ll become ISIS??? We are ISIS. The monster you reference is a monster of our own creation. The petrol dollar needs the Saudi’s and our elected rep’s need Israeli cash to get re-elected. Add these 2 together and you get….ISIS some type of security complex private contractor creation which equals the back door to Syria. The Saudi’s and Qatari’s will get their pipeline dammit!! Touchy feely make believe didn’t work last year when O Bomb Ya tried to tell us that Assad was gassing his own people. I think they were shocked b/c that play worked so well to get rid of Gaddafi. If the folks in the Pentagon and White House had played football they would know that you can never expect a reverse to work twice in one game. Now they are back to good fear which akin to an off tackle play. Good old fashioned blocking and tackling.
I have A LOT of contact with the younger folks and I agree with TE on this one. Also, most young people don’t really listen to any music these days and can you blame them?
An interesting article… http://thesestonewalls.com/gordon-macrae/in-the-absence-of-fathers-a-story-of-elephants-and-men/
@Bastogne, where have YOU been hiding?
I’ve been saying from day 1 of my seeing ISIS in the MSM, cover for invading Syria.
Someday these crimes will be exposed and we ‘murkins are going to be on the wrong side of history.
Welcome, please stick around and play.
The government playbook is becoming so obvious even dumb fucks like bb will start to predict it.
A litmus test if U will.
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